Teens are the new driving force behind smartphone sales in the US. Not that long ago smartphones were the exclusive territory of uber-geeks and Blackberry toting suits. Five years ago Apple managed to mainstream smartphones and make them cool, and where there’s cool, there are bound to be teens.

The 25 to 34 age bracket still leads in terms of overall smartphone adoption. However, when they are not bringing pipebombs and shotguns to school, or getting angst about Justin Beiber not replying to their love letters, US teens are spending more time on their smartphones according to a new Nielsen survey.

A year ago 36 percent of US teens owned a smartphone, but today the adoption rate has jumped to 58 percent. We are guessing quite a few of these phones were hand-me-downs from older siblings or parents.

Nielsen analyst Nichole Henderson believes carriers and manufactures should start considering how to market smartphones and services to the ever growing teen market. An earlier Nielsen survey found that teens are nuts about texting and that teen girls send an average of 3,952 text messages each month. That works out to about 131 texts each day or 5.5 each hour. Boys send an average of 2,815 messages a month, probably because their hands are busy elsewhere.

However, obsessive texting does not translate into heavy calling. In fact, the average number of minutes spent chatting on teen phones seems to be declining. All of a sudden, that Facebook phone idea starts to sound great.

More here.